Real estate conversations are a most popular subject at parties these days. I’ve been working in and around the real estate business all of my life, and we certainly do find ourselves in interesting times.

For the last few years our local real estate market has been unlike anything we have seen before. Interest rates were the lowest I had ever seen in my career and price escalation was moving at the fastest pace I had ever seen.

It was a frenzy! People were pulling out all the stops.

Although properties were listed at the absolute top of the market, folks caught up in the frenzy offered tens of thousands of dollars over the asking price, waived inspections and often waived the mortgage. Wow!

During this time, it was great to be a seller, and not so terrific if you were a payment buyer with credit issues. There had never been a more frustrating time for buyer’s agents, as the competition was fierce.

“Multiple offers” became the expectation, as it was not uncommon to have a half dozen offers or more on a property. Everyone has heard of someone who had 15 offers and got $75,000 over asking.

Sounds like a tall tale, an urban myth, but it’s true those things were happening.

But that was then and this is now.

So what is happening today? What’s the difference? The short answer is that we are moving back to what’s normal, but we have been living in a fantasy for so long it is rather hard to accept.

The fact of the matter is, that over the last 50 years the average mortgage interest rate was closer to 9% than 3%.

In fact in 1980, the mortgage rate was an unbelievable 18% to 20%. I was as staggered by those rates back then as I was with 3%, but truth be told both were just crazy anomalies.

Our low rates were the result of the federal government keeping rates low to stimulate the economy and now rising rates are the result of the federal government forcing rates up to slow things down and reduce inflation.

We can have a discussion about free markets and government interference at another time, for now the question is what is going on in the real estate market now and what is ahead?

I recently attended a webinar in which Dr. Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, made two very important predictions.

The first was that we should see interest rates return to about 6% by the end 2023. Sounds like pretty good news considering what I said earlier about 9% being rather normal. The problem being that we haven’t seen interest rates at 6% since the spring of 2008, 15 years ago.

So for our younger buyers, as long as they have been thinking of more serious subjects than beer pong, interest rates have been under 6%. So I guess younger buyers may think it prudent to sit back and wait for rates to return to their normal.

But here is the issue, a very wise financial guru told me back in 1979, when rates were still only 10.5%, that we would NEVER see 6% again. I guess the moral of that story is never say never, but it wasn’t until the winter of 2003 that we saw rates dip below 6%, 24 years later.

So I hope you see what I’m getting at, it could be a long wait.

The second piece of good news predicted by Yun was that our real estate prices in Western Pennsylvania are stable. Many people are afraid that since we had property selling for top of the market prices, we would be in for some sort of correction. Yun says, not so.

There is a serious shortage of available housing on the market and that has been the case for years. Until that shortage begins to correct itself our prices will continue to improve, although at a normal pace of 3% or 4% per year.

So what does that all mean?

If you are interested in buying your dream home, go ahead and do it, understanding that while you wait for rates to come down (which could take some time) the price of that dream is still going up and you continue throwing your money out the window paying rent, which has reached all time highs. After all, refinancing is still an option if rates come down more quickly than expected.

If you are thinking of selling, good news, although you missed the frenzied market of the last few years, you still get the benefit of those ramped up prices because those homes that sold over the last few years are now used as comparable sales when establishing your value. And if prospective buyers take to heart the things I’ve had to say here, then they will be out looking for your house very soon.

Gary Straub is the branch manager for Berkshire Hathaway Home Services, the Preferred Realty, Butler, Slippery Rock, Grove City and Kittanning.